Dan Stevens, the Downton Abbey actor, has become a father for the second time,
ahead of his upcoming Broadway debut in The Heiress.

As Dan Stevens prepares to move to New York for his Broadway debut in The Heiress, the Downton Abbey actor is making last-minute arrangements for an extra passenger to join his party for the transatlantic flight.

Mandrake can disclose that the 29 year-old has become a father for the second time by his wife, the jazz singer Susie Hariet. “Baby two has now arrived — it’s a boy — and we are of course delighted,” a beaming Stevens tells me at a Samsung party in Mayfair.

The publicity-shy actor chose not to make any official announcement, but says that the birth ought not to come as too much of a surprise after his wife’s pregnancy first became apparent at the Olivier Awards at the Royal Opera House on April 15. “If you had done the maths it would be very odd if the birth hadn’t happened by now,” Stevens laughs.

Stevens and his wife already have a daughter, Willow, aged two, but are not yet saying what they are going to call her brother. “We’re going over to New York as a family so we’ll all stay in an apartment somewhere, but I don’t know where yet,” he says.

The engagement that Stevens has on Broadway to appear in Henry James’s work will see him appearing alongside the Hollywood actress Jessica Chastain. “We go there in a few weeks, to start rehearsals — it is all very exciting. We start previews in the beginning of October and then open in November.”